Battlefield of the Mind: Winning the Battle in Your Mind

The second “wilderness mentality” Meyer describes is a renunciation of responsibility, in which the Christian throws up their hands and hopes that someone else will do the necessary work for them. She takes the example of Terah (Abraham’s father) from the Old Testament, who was drawn to move to Canaan but only made it halfway there before settling down. In Meyer’s words, “[A] lot of people have wishbone but no backbone. People with a ‘wilderness mentality’ want to have everything and do nothing” (201). By contrast, when God gives Christians something to do, they are expected to do it, and they cannot hope to find victory without taking responsibility and initiative.

Meyer reflects on the years in which she and Dave were launching her new ministry, explaining how easy it would have been to give up when the challenges loomed large and the promise still seemed distant. It was only by resolute perseverance in obeying God’s call that they saw their vision for the ministry come to fruition. In response to those readers who use Scripture to protest that people are called to cast their cares on the Lord, Meyer says, “Learn to cast your care, but not your responsibility” (204). There is a danger of becoming the sort of person who escapes their worries by running away from everything of significance in their life.

Meyer’s emphasis on personal responsibility has drawn some criticism from other Christians, including those who perceive it as downplaying the importance of God’s grace in supporting the efforts of inherently flawed human actors. It is also central to her alleged embrace of the “prosperity gospel,” potentially implying that those who do not enjoy success simply did not try hard enough.

Chapter Lessons

• When God gives Christians something to do, they must simply do it.
• The desire to evade responsibility is sinful and shows a lack of trust in God’s calling.
• Christians must be intentional about pressing forward in the way God calls them to go.

Reflection Questions

• Does Meyer’s description of this wilderness mentality resonate with any part of your life? In what ways have you been tempted to pass off responsibility?
• What are a few practical ways that you could be more intentional about responding to God’s call in your life?

The third “wilderness mentality” is a sense of entitlement: a desire that everything be easy rather than hard. Meyer argues that Satan sometimes attacks Christians by tempting them to spend all their time talking about how hard their current situation is rather than thinking positively and looking at the fruit God is bringing out of those hardships. Meyer reminds readers that God has given them the Holy Spirit as their helper and that if he is leading, they can be sure of victory even if the pathway is hard. She draws again on the Old Testament story of the Israelites entering the Promised Land, noting that hardship was a continuing part of their story: “Most people think that entering the Promised Land means no more battles, but that is incorrect. […] after the Israelites crossed the Jordan River and went in to possess the land of promise, they fought one battle after another” (211). Those battles were part of God’s design, and it was God who gave them the victory.

Instead of a complaining attitude, or one that focuses on talking about how hard things are, Christians should seek to respond like Jesus did to his circumstances. Though he faced many hardships and challenges, he did not walk around Galilee and Judea complaining about how hard it was; he kept his eyes fixed on the Father’s calling and followed faithfully all the way to the cross. This is one instance in which Meyer is arguably selective in her use of biblical evidence. For example, the biblical accounts of the Agony in the Garden (the hours between the Last Supper and Jesus’s arrest) depict Jesus as accepting God’s will but also praying to be spared suffering and death.

Chapter Lessons

• Many Christians hope or expect things to be easy, but hardships are often part of God’s design in one’s life.
• Satan sometimes tempts Christians to waste their time and lose their focus by prompting them to reflect on how hard things are.
• Strive to be like Jesus, who did not complain about hardships but simply fulfilled his mission with courage and intentionality.

Reflection Questions

• What are some areas in your life in which you spend too much time focusing on the hardships?
• Do you agree that lamenting hardships is necessarily at odds with accepting them?

The fourth “wilderness mentality” is one in which Christians think of themselves as unchangeable, so set in the patterns of negative thinking that they have embraced those patterns as part of their identity. Such a Christian looks at the message of the preceding chapter—that one ought to have a positive attitude even amid hardships—as impossible. Drawing from a passage in the book of 1 Peter, Meyer notes that Scripture does not direct its attention to human suffering (which is simply assumed) but to attitude while suffering. Whereas the complaining of the Israelites in their post-exodus wanderings forms a negative example, Meyer draws attention to the biblical story of Jesus as the exemplar of patient endurance amid suffering: “The Israelites complained and remained in the wilderness. Jesus praised and was raised from the dead” (222). The Christian response is to follow Jesus’s way and to focus on praise and gratitude rather than grumbling or worrying. Patience is one of the key virtues in Meyer’s analysis, but patience considered in a specific sense: “I have discovered that patience is not the ability to wait, but the ability to keep a good attitude while waiting” (223).

Meyer’s message about the importance of enduring hardship patiently is in line with broader Christian teachings, although her framing of virtues in implicitly transactional terms (“Jesus praised and was raised from the dead”) has drawn criticism from those who argue that Meyer frames virtue as a means to reward. Nevertheless, her arguments present a path forward for those seeking an approach to positive thinking rooted in Christian ideas. 

Chapter Lessons

• The Bible doesn’t focus on human suffering so much as on attitude during suffering.
• Jesus is the exemplar of a positive and patient attitude during hardship.
• Patience is more than just waiting; it is keeping a good attitude while waiting.

Reflection Questions

• What do you think of Meyer’s definition of patience? Do you find it fitting?
• Can you think of other people from the Bible who stand out as examples of keeping their attitudes rightly oriented even amid suffering?

The fifth “wilderness mentality” is another form of entitlement: the belief that one deserves everything without waiting. Meyer concedes that she, like so many people in our goal-oriented culture, found waiting difficult until she began to realize that people spend far more time waiting than they do receiving what they are waiting for. This sparked a new resolution: “We need to learn to enjoy where we are while we are on our way to where we are going!” (227).

Meyer advises her readers to cultivate several virtues, with humility foremost among them. A humble person will not assume that they automatically deserve everything, so they will wait patiently. She also counsels people to be realistic—to hold a positive attitude, but not to descend into wishful thinking. In her traveling ministry, she expects things to go wrong along the way. This is not a negative perspective but a realistic one; she sees the challenges coming and has resolved to deal with them in an intentional and unperturbed way. God allows suffering, hardship, and long periods of waiting because that is how he grows certain virtues, like humility and patience. A person’s reactions to such times force them to deal with the pride and entitlement that lie under the surface of their lives. The best response, then, is to wait on God’s timing and to remain humble and patient while he does his work in one’s heart.

Chapter Lessons

• An entitled, impatient attitude is the result of the sin of self-centered pride.
• God allows periods of hardship and waiting to help people develop the virtues of humility and patience.
• Christians should have a realistic attitude toward life, expecting challenges to come and being ready to deal with them with patience and grace.

Reflection Questions

• What do you think of Meyer’s connection of impatience with pride?
• Is there something that you’re struggling to wait for right now? How would Meyer advise you to handle this season in your life?

Meyer’s “sixth wilderness” mentality is one of displaced blame and a refusal to take responsibility for one’s own wrong actions. This is a common theme in Scripture, coming up in the story of Adam and Eve as well as in the story of Abraham’s family, both of which feature cases of people trying to displace blame from themselves when things go awry. Meyer shares another reflection on her own childhood trauma, reflecting on a time when God showed her that part of the problem in her life was her continued habit of placing blame on those past events rather than taking responsibility for her present actions.

People who displace blame and avoid facing up to their own behavior typically use “if” statements or “but” statements to deflect unwanted conviction. They employ “if” or “if only” statements to imagine a wished-for reality where their difficult situation didn’t arise at all, or “but” statements to protest against taking responsibility. Using the story of King David’s sin in the Old Testament, Meyer notes that the correct response is not to displace blame but to confess one’s sins and seek the Lord’s forgiveness. Acknowledging the truth about the situation—including the truth about oneself—is the first step to healing, to leaving the wilderness behind in order to enter our Promised Land.

Although Meyer’s framing of the issue is explicitly Christian, her distinction between explaining a behavior and excusing it is one that features widely in conversations about trauma, mental illness, etc. The message is not to minimize how such forces shape behavior but rather to convey that it remains the responsibility of the individual to find ways to avoid perpetuating harmful behaviors, whether understood in a religious or secular sense.

Chapter Lessons

• Satan tries to tempt Christians to deflect blame from themselves.
• Christians should face up to the truth about themselves and confess their sins to God.
• “If” and “but” statements are often ways of explaining away wrong behavior.

Reflection Questions

• Do you think that Meyer’s advice about not explaining away present behavior in terms of past trauma is always applicable, or are there exceptions?
• Are there times when you have attempted to deflect responsibility for your actions? How could you begin to take ownership of them?

The seventh “wilderness mentality” is one in which Christians pity themselves for their troubles. Meyer introduces the idea by relating something the Lord disclosed to her once: “Joyce, you can be pitiful or powerful, but you cannot be both” (247). Meyer argues that self-pity is another temptation from Satan and can easily derail a Christian from a victorious life.

Meyer even identifies self-pity as a form of idolatry in that it puts one’s feelings at the absolute center of one’s life. This displaces God from his proper place in one’s life. Self-pity also damages one’s ability to relate to others: “It makes us only aware of our own selves and our own needs and concerns—and that is certainly a narrow-minded way to live” (248). The remedy is to resolve to think of others and to put their needs first. When feelings of self-pity assault Christians, they must simply let go of those feelings in the presence of God and trust him to carry them through.

Chapter Lessons

• One cannot be both pitiful and powerful.
• Self-pity is a form of idolatry, magnifying one’s own feelings to the ultimate place of importance.
• Self-pity damages one’s ability to relate to others and perceive their needs.

Reflection Questions

• Meyer calls self-pity a form of idolatry, which would make it tantamount to breaking one of the Ten Commandments. Do you think Meyer’s equivalence of these two ideas is on point?
• How might self-pity be impacting your empathy for those around you?

Meyer’s eighth “wilderness mentality” is one in which a Christian thinks themselves unworthy of God’s favor. Rather than believing the testimony of Scripture—that God has rolled their reproach away—they still see themselves as covered in shame. Meyer again invokes her childhood trauma, demonstrating her own journey of wrestling with this mentality: “Because of the things I had done and what had been done to me, I had a shame-based nature. I blamed myself” (255). It is through internalizing what the Bible says about the Christian’s identity—righteous, pure, and the heir of God’s favor—that believers can leave their self-reproach behind. It’s not a matter of believing that one deserves God’s blessings on one’s own merits, but simply of believing what the Bible says: that God gives those blessings regardless and makes people worthy of receiving them. 

Satan will attack the Christian mind on this point, seeking to distract believers and lock them in despair by believing lies about themselves. The way a person sees themselves can keep them locked into the fear of rejection or failure because they haven’t yet come to believe the truth about who they really are: above reproach, and an heir of the Kingdom of God. To receive God’s blessings, people must believe that he has made them worthy to receive them and stop nullifying God’s work by clinging to reproach that he has already rolled away.

Chapter Lessons

• Believing that we are unworthy, or failures, or stained with reproach is a lie that Satan uses to keep Christians from believing the Bible.
• Scripture testifies that God has already rolled our reproach away.
• Christians need to see themselves rightly to receive the blessings God wants to give.

Reflection Questions

• In this chapter, Meyer expands her principle of positive thinking into how we think about ourselves. Is it easier for you to think positively about yourself or about external circumstances in your life? Why?
• Does Meyer’s discussion of reproach resonate with you? Do you think it’s possible to both recognize one’s failings and avoid “reproach”?

The ninth “wilderness mentality” involves jealousy and envy. Meyer points out that this issue is of such importance that it appears in one of the few stories of Jesus’s post-resurrection appearances in the Gospel of John. There, Jesus tells Peter not to worry about God’s plan for John, but to mind his own business. Meyer argues that jealousy is a form of insecurity, a negative attitude about oneself that one then projects onto others. Those who feel insecure about their own value in God’s eyes resent the value and worthiness they see in other people’s lives. 

The fact that Jesus’s own disciples struggled with this issue gives Meyer hope—if they could overcome the hurdle of jealousy, then we can, too. The way forward is to accept what the Bible says about the way God sees humanity: not only as worthy to receive his blessings, but richly lavished with those blessings in an overflowing, abundant manner. Comparing oneself with others is meaningless from this perspective because all people are recipients of the overflowing magnanimity of God’s infinite love, to which no scale for comparisons can ever be attached.

Meyer contextualizes her discussion of jealousy and envy with reference to the societal promotion of competition, writing that society sees getting ahead of others as the best thing. Although Meyer does not single out contemporary Western societies specifically, her indictment of the pursuit of wealth and power above all else anticipates the growing dissatisfaction with materialism in such societies throughout the early 21st century—a development echoed in self-help literature.

Chapter Lessons

• Jealousy is an extension of having a poor self-image, which makes people look at others resentfully in comparison to themselves.
• Jealousy and envy are carnal and childish, leading only to greater dissatisfaction.
• When a person sees themselves as God sees them—worthy of receiving abundant blessings—jealousy loses its meaning.

Reflection Questions

• Think about a time when you felt jealous of someone else. Do you think Meyer’s analysis is correct in your case? Were your feelings more about your own insecurity than about the other person?
• Are there times when comparing oneself or one’s situation to others might be helpful?